Hot Sauce Threat

Hot Sauce Threat

SEPTEMBER 21--Angered that his Taco Bell drive-thru order failed to include hot sauce, a Missouri man returned to the fast food restaurant and allegedly pulled a shotgun on an employee, who fled in fear from the takeout window.

The bizarre incident Saturday evening resulted in the arrest of Jeremy Combs, a 30-year-old convicted felon, on both state and federal charges. Combs is pictured in the below mug shot.

According to a U.S. District Court complaint, investigators with the Lee’s Summit Police Department interviewed Combs Sunday afternoon about the incident. Combs admitted that he had purchased several items from Taco Bell, only to return home to discover “the Taco Bell employee had failed to include his…hot sauce.”

While Combs told cops that he “became upset and drove back to the Taco Bell to confront the employee,” he denied brandishing a shotgun at the drive-thru worker. He said the item was actually a tire iron, a claim police say is belied by Taco Bell surveillance footage showing Combs in his Ford F-150 truck.

During a subsequent search of Combs’s residence, police discovered a Mossberg shotgun with live rounds of ammunition affixed to its side (the weapon was hidden under the mattress in Combs’s bedroom). In a conversation Monday with a Lee’s Summit detective, Combs reportedly copped to possessing the shotgun at Taco Bell, adding that he bought the weapon--which did not have a serial number--“from ‘Mark’ at a drug house in Independence, Missouri.”

The incarcerated Combs is scheduled for a detention hearing tomorrow in federal court in Kansas City. According to the criminal complaint, Combs’s rap sheet includes 14 felony arrests and three felony convictions. (3 pages)